


how we kiss and kill each other

by softambrollins



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Angst, Crying, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 19:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16561778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softambrollins/pseuds/softambrollins
Summary: "How'd you get in here?" Seth asks, gently, like he's a wild animal and he doesn't want to spook him."Balcony," Dean says, like it's obvious. Because of course Dean Ambrose would get drunk and climb up the side of a building to try to start a fight with him. It would be par for the course with them, but nothing about the last two weeks has been anywhere near normal. Dean's not okay, he knew that from the very first moment, he's been shattered and he's leaking pain and rage everywhere, and it feels like he's close to hitting critical.





	how we kiss and kill each other

**Author's Note:**

> This is set the weekend before this week's RAW.
> 
> There's no purpose for this except me working out my own feelings about all this, because oh boy, do I have a lot.

Seth wakes up to someone breaking in to his hotel room. 

He thinks he's dreaming for a half a second, because god knows his dreams have been disturbing recently, but he just stays perfectly still, listening — and someone's definitely sliding open the door to the balcony, and he feels cold air from outside creeping in — 

He lies there for another moment, not moving, his heart racing, before he swiftly gets to his feet and reaches out to grab the intruder by the shoulders.

"Hey, what the hell are you —"

The dark figure takes a swing at him, and he ducks, only on instinct.

"Fucking fight back, you coward," he snarls.

And — what? He has to be fucking hallucinating now.

"Dean?" he whispers, raising his head back up, peering at him through the darkness in genuine shock.

He doesn't answer, just comes at him again, but his movements are unnatural, wobbly, like he's walking underwater — and Seth only has a fraction of a second to react but he manages to kick his leg out from under him. He crumples to the floor in a heap, groaning loudly.

He manages to get on top of him, Dean still struggling against him all the way, stilling screaming at him to _Just fight me, you fucking piece of shit_ , and pins his arms down to the floor. He can smell the strong, pungent scent of alcohol right in his face now.

Dean looks like shit. Even more so than he has this entire week. He has a black eye. Seth's pretty much positive it didn't come from him. He didn't fight Dean back. Not tonight, not the night before.

"Where'd you get that?" he asks, instead of the logical questions he should be asking, like _What the fuck do you think you're doing?_

"Some asshole at a bar," Dean says, like this is a perfectly normal conversation they're having. "He was getting on my fuckin' nerves."

Seth glances down at Dean's hands, his wrists pinned down by Seth's. His knuckles are raw and bloody.

"Guess I wouldn't like to see the other guy, huh?"

Dean lets out an ugly kind of laugh. "Nah, that's not from him. Just from a wall in a back-alley somewhere."

Seth just stares down at him, eyes narrowed in concern. Dean just scowls at him in return. 

His grip on Dean's arms weakens, but it feels like Dean's done fighting him back. For now.

"If I let you go, are you gonna stop acting like a fucking idiot?" Seth asks patiently.

Dean just rolls his eyes, but then looks back at him and nods.

He slowly lets go, easing his body off of Dean's and onto the carpet. He lets out a sigh, sitting with his back against the bed, wiping his hand over his face. His heart's only just starting to return to its normal rate.

Dean gracelessly gets back to his feet and stumbles through the bathroom door, and Seth hears the unmistakable sound of him throwing up in the toilet.

He slowly gets up and follows him, standing just inside the door. He's kneeling on the cold floor, heaving his guts up, and Seth watches as he gets up, goes over to sink, washes his mouth out, splashes water on his face.

Then he turns around and just sinks back down to the floor like his legs are too shaky to keep his weight up.

Seth just looks at him for a minute, assessing the situation, making sure he's not gonna try to take off or punch him again, before carefully settling down on the ground too, facing him. 

"How'd you get in here?" Seth asks, gently, like he's a wild animal and he doesn't want to spook him.

"Balcony," Dean says, like it's obvious. Because of course Dean Ambrose would get drunk and climb up the side of a building to try to start a fight with him. It would be par for the course with them, but nothing about the last two weeks has been anywhere near normal. Dean's not okay, he knew that from the very first moment, he's been shattered and he's leaking pain and rage everywhere, and it feels like he's close to hitting critical.

"Why?" Seth asks, and then instantly flinches at his own words, because it's a question he's already sick and tired of asking, of wondering. It's haunting his fucking dreams and now so is Dean, and he still won't tell him — 

"No, you tell _me_ ," Dean says calmly. "You tell me _why_."

"What are you talking about?" Seth asks, confused.

"You know what," Dean bites out. "Why do you keep lying down and taking it? Is that how much you think you're worth? Why the fuck won't you just _fight back_?"

Seth just stares at him with utter disbelief and regret. 

"Is that what you want from me, Dean?" he asks sadly.

"I want you to act like a fucking man and do what you say you're gonna do."

Seth shakes his head. "I don't want to hurt you." 

"How could you not?" Dean says scornfully. "After everything? Aren't you fucking angry? Don't you just want to fucking destroy _everything_?"

Maybe the person he was four years ago would. Burn everything down in his wake so he wouldn't have to feel anything, so he wouldn't have anything to lose anymore. Maybe it's not so hard to imagine what Dean was thinking when he drove his skull into the concrete floor.

"It's not gonna fix anything, Dean," Seth tells him, like an apology. "It's not gonna make me feel better. None of this — it's not gonna do anything but leave us both with fucking _nothing_. I learnt that the hard way."

Dean laughs coldly at that. "Maybe that's what we deserve."

Seth nods. "Okay, maybe you're right. Maybe we deserve to be fucking miserable and alone. God knows we've done enough bad things in our lives. But I don't think you really believe that —"

Dean actually looks up at him at that, startled for the first time.

"Otherwise, why would you still be here? You could've just walked away, free and clear, but you didn't. You still want to be _right here_." _With me_ , he doesn't say. And maybe he's being manipulative right now, maybe Dean knows that, but he's gonna do whatever it takes to make this right with Dean. He can't lose him, not now, not like this.

"Would you have let me walk away?" Dean says, and his voice sounds smaller and almost slightly defeated now.

"I'm not letting you walk away _now_ ," Seth says firmly. "But if I thought you really wanted that, then yeah, I'd do that. For you."

" _For me_?" Dean asks. "Because you always know what's good for me, right? Because you're so much better and smarter and fucking well-adjusted?"

"Dean — I'd do anything for you to be happy. _Anything._ And maybe I am fucking selfish and I don't want to lose you because I'm fucking scared of who I am without you there — but if you didn't want this anymore, I'd let you go." And maybe that's just a flat-out lie, but he'll live with it.

Dean just regards him skeptically now.

"I'm not any less fucked-up than you are," Seth admits. "I just want to help you. Any way I can."

"But you can't," Dean finishes.

"And the thought of that fucking _kills_ me," he tells him honestly.

"You don't want to fight me," Dean acknowledges softly, evenly.

Seth shakes his head mournfully. "I just want you to tell me what's wrong. And maybe I can't do a thing about it, maybe you'll still want to kick the shit out of me after, but that's where we have to start."

Seth just looks across at him, and Dean looks back, breathing steadily.

And then Dean starts to talk.

"You know, when I came back, a part of me felt like maybe it would be better if I...hadn't."

"Dean —" 

"No, don't — I just — You wanna know why I didn't call you for so long after?" Dean says, with a sick grimace on his face. "I wanted to, I wanted to a lot, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. You were champion, you were happy, you had everything you ever wanted. And I was just fucking _angry_ , at myself, at you, at everything. It's like all the anger I ever felt over the years, over my whole goddamn life, just came back. All at once. And I didn't know what to do with it."

Seth lets out a breath.

"I thought training, working to come back would make it better. But coming back — for a long time, it just felt like none of this meant anything. It was just bullshit, titles and costumes and trying to be the best in the world, and I didn't give a shit about any of it. Wrestling's the one thing I could always count on to be there, to feel right, and I almost lost it. Just like that. Maybe it gave up on me too."

"Dean, we didn't give up on you, alright?" Seth tells him earnestly, voice cracking. "We never did. And I'm not going to now."

Dean just shakes his head. "Sometimes I feel like there's just...nothing there anymore. Like I can't feel a damn thing. I'm just numb. And other times there's just all this fucking _rage_. And I can’t control it."

Seth reaches for his hand, but Dean pulls away.

"I can't fucking _look_ at you right now without seeing everything I ever lost," Dean tells him. "Everything I convinced myself I could have that just got ripped away again."

And that cuts like a knife straight through him. It's the worst kind of pain he can remember feeling in a long time.

"You said you want me to be happy? Well, I don't know what I need to be happy. Maybe I'll never find out. I... I don't know what's wrong with me," he says, voice shaky. "So there's no fixing this, Seth. No fixing me."

He sounds so helpless that Seth feels his heart clench in his chest, eyes starting to well up.

Dean looks like he's about to get up and leave then, but Seth grabs him by his jacket to keep him there. Pulls him close enough so he can crash their mouths together. It's a mess, they're both crying, Dean's all battered and bruised to hell — and it's not soft, it's rough and desperate and it hurts a little, like everything does with them, he supposes — but they don't let go of each other. Seth's hands on Dean's face, Dean's nails digging into the skin on his back, clinging on to each other as tightly as possible.

They stay there on the dirty bathroom floor for a long time, just breathing against each other's lips, hands tracing over each other's warm skin.

Eventually, Seth pulls away and helps him to his feet. They stay there for a little while longer, Seth carefully cleaning up the cuts on his knuckles and bandaging his hands, and Dean just letting him. It still amazes him, that they can have these soft, quiet moments amidst the wars and the chaos — but he knows this one isn't going to last very long.

Afterwards, he just leads him over to the bed and they just lie there on either side of it, looking at each other but not touching, for a while. Seth doesn't want to think about what happens in the morning, or tomorrow night, or after that. He just wants to _forget_ , wants to forget the last two weeks, just wants to keep Dean right here next to him. Let everything else fade away.

"C'mere," Dean says after a minute. He just reaches out and pulls him in and Seth lets himself go, tucks his head against Dean's chest, Dean's arms wrapping around his shoulders. Seth closes his eyes and breathes in his scent, and Dean presses his mouth to Seth's hair.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, so, so quietly.

"I know," Seth replies, feeling Dean's heart beating gently against his cheek. 

Forgiveness is a complicated thing with them. They love each other too much not to forgive, no matter what happens. But that same love means that the cuts they make on each other are always so much harder to heal. Maybe they never will. Maybe for them, love and hurt are impossible to separate.

When Seth wakes up in the morning, he's already gone. Like he was never there.

He just curls himself up into a ball and lets himself cry until the tears won't come anymore.


End file.
